A major concern to me is the status of the railways and general inter-model transportation. I have heard that the major railways have not progressed at all in compliance and given that thier systems feed each other, this would be a huge problem. Anybody have reliable information on the status of the major railways or a suitable web site?

-- Patrick Galpin (pgalpin@stratum-group.com), January 09, 1998

Answers

Patrick, I don't have any reliable information, but have seen the topic discussed in the comp.software.year-2000 forum from time to time. There are potential risks in the various embedded systems that control the locomotive engines, etc., but most of the cs.y2000 newsgroup discussions have centered on the possible disruptions in the tracks, switching yards, and other "infrastructure" components that support the railroad itself.

I'm not aware of any web sites or industry trade associations tracking the situation, and if anyone comes up with one, I would be very interested! Lacking that, I think all of us should continue watching the travails of Union Pacific, which has been dealing with logistical problems for several months now. It's not Y2K-related, of course, but part of the problem comes from computer problems resulting from the merger with Burlington NOrthern railroad

-- Ed Yourdon (yourdon@sprintmail.com), January 10, 1998.

Union Pacific merged with Southern Pacifc not Burlington Northern. In 1995 (before the merger) Union Pacific was nailed by the government for not providing grain cars for the harvest in a timely manner. It has taken them quite some time to get their computer systems straightened out. I worked on the Grain Car Allocation System in 1996 and was aware of problems with several other projects.

Now to relate that to Y2K. This has put them way off track for doing their repairs and gives an example of how complex the computer systems are and how much we depend on them.

-- Rebecca Kutcher (kutcher@pionet.net), January 10, 1998.

Is there a way to identify which railway companies are the primary carriers of coal? Especially to those electic generating stations that burn coal to generate electricity.

Same question regarding pipeline companies that move petroleum and natural gas to generating stations?

-- Victor Porlier (vporlier@aol.com), January 10, 1998.

I don't know about all of the railroads, but I would guess that Union Pacific has a large contract for coal and I do know that Burlington Northern has one. (We live near their line and there are coal trains about once per hour every day.) You would need to find out what areas of the country are served by each line to know which plants could be affected.

-- Rebecca Kutcher (kutcher@pionet.net), January 11, 1998.

Rebecca,

Thanks for the correction about which railroad Union Pacific merged with...

I was intrigued by your comment that the recent computer-related problems Union Pacific has been dealing with may have the side-effect of distracting attention and resources from their own Y2K projects.

The other area where we're seeing this in a BIG way today is the Asian banks.

-- Ed Yourdon (yourdon@sprintmail.com), January 11, 1998.

I would imagine that the US railway companies have some industry wide group on y2k. According to Computerweekly Nov 13, 1997, in the UK, they created the Rail Millennium Programme Office to mastermind Great Britain's rail networks year 2000 efforts.

There must be a US Railways Association of some sort doing the same. I am going to spend some time finding out, unless someone has already done the research and I don't need to plow furrowed ground.

-- victor porlier (vporlier@aol.com), January 11, 1998.

Union Pacific Factoid from computerworld.com/news/year-2000

UP says the RR will be ready for 2000. The only question involves the software and systems furnished to UP by 16,000 suppliers. UP is asking these suppliers to certify that their equipment is y2k compliant.

Of course, ALL 16,000 will honestly certify that their stuff is AOK!!!! How could it be otherwise?

-- Victor Porlier (vporlier@aol.com), January 12, 1998.

This url showed up on another Y2K site and tells about Union Pacific becoming compliant and its 16,000 vendors. http://www.computerworld.com/news/year_2000/980112y2k_up.html

-- Rebecca Kutcher (kutcher@pionet.net), January 14, 1998.

Forbes Annual Report on American Industry Jan 12 1998 lists these seven major RRs. Sales for last year suggest orders of magnitude of volume shipped.

Union Pacific $11,328mil CSX 10,597 Burlington Santa Fe 8,347 Canadian Pacific 6,409 Norfolk Southern 5,061 Kansas City Southern 985 Illinois Central 685

It would be well to know where each of these are in their y2k plans for hardware, software, firmware, and supplier/vendor/customer (especially fuels)chains. Any suggestions as to how this might be researched? Also, if the Union Pacific/SouthernPacific merger has created massive freight bottlenecks; what will the coming division of Conrail this summer mean for CSX and Norfolk Southern who will absorb the pieces starting this fall and integrating their systems into 1999 and beyond? ( if there is a beyond)

-- Victor Porlier (vporlier@aol.com), January 14, 1998.

Factoid from the Association of American Railroads webpage - www.aar.org/

65% of the nation's coal which generates 60% of the nation's electricity and 40% of the nation's grain and farm products are carried on American Railroads.

There is no reference to a y2k doc at the site which I could find, so I e-mailed their Director of Communications to see what he knows. If I get a resonse I'll post its essence here.

-- Victor Porlier (vporlier@aol.com), January 15, 1998.